Why Mary Queen of Scots' murdered private secretary David Rizzio was a political scapegoat

At the head of the table sat her Italian secretary. Six months pregnant, Mary tried to resist, protesting as they dragged him from her side. Moments later he was dead – stabbed 56 times.

Yet the removal of his body from the court did not erase him from memory. Four-and-a-half centuries later, visitors to the palace are still shown the marks of his blood, while since 1898 his figure has stood among Scotland’s greats in William Brassey Hole’s processional frieze at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – a Victorian monument to national identity, and a reminder that his murder still lingers as an open question.

Why was this obscure court musician turned into the victim of such fury, and why does his ghost still haunt the imagination? Born in the Duchy of Savoy – now Piedmont in northern Italy – Rizzio trained as a musician and served for a time with the future Cardinal Girolamo della Rovere in Savoy and France.

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A meteoric rise

In 1561, aged 28, he arrived in Scotland with Duke Emmanuel Philibert’s diplomatic mission, led by the Count of Moretta. His rich bass voice won him a place in Mary’s choir, but it was their shared cultural background and his practical skills that secured his position. When the embassy returned home, he accepted Mary’s invitation to stay – and within three years he had risen to become her private secretary.

Rizzio’s meteoric rise unsettled many. A year before he set foot in Edinburgh, the Protestant “Lords of the Congregation” had pushed through a reformed parliament. By the time Mary returned from France in 1561, John Knox was already thundering against her Catholic faith.

Tensions between Protestants and Catholics were running high. Rizzio was foreign-born Catholic, apparently of low status – and openly marked out as different. Gossip swirled around his private life: he was rumoured to have been found in bed with Lord Darnley on one occasion, and locked in Mary’s chambers on another. Above all, he was seen as having the queen’s ear.

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A calculated strike at Mary

His role in delicate affairs only deepened suspicion, feeding fears that, through Rizzio, Mary might steer Scotland back into the orbit of Catholic Europe. As an Italian outsider, Rizzio could be painted as a foreign agent at Mary’s side, a danger to the nobles’ estates and their influence at court.

The conspirators played ruthlessly on Darnley’s insecurities – as husband and frustrated claimant to the crown matrimonial – twisting his jealousy into fuel for their plot. Yet the killing that followed was no crime of passion but a calculated strike at the queen herself – the removal of an alien presence from the body politic.

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History shows how often political anger is channelled towards a single victim. The French thinker René Girard argued that, in times of crisis, societies unite by turning on a scapegoat – usually an outsider, different enough to be blamed.

It is a pattern that still feels familiar, in an age when anger is once again directed at outsiders. Few cases fit the model better than Rizzio’s killing. Scotland was torn by religious division, uncertainty over the succession, and hostility to Mary’s marriage with Darnley. Rizzio’s death left a stark reminder of how power maintains itself through sacrifice.

Rizzio’s lasting place in art

But the story does not end there. Rizzio’s murder has been retold on canvas, stage and screen from Scotland to Italy. In the 18th century, his name sold Scots tunes in London; in the 19th, Romantic nationalism cast him as the ultimate ‘other’. Later, writers and filmmakers reimagined him as a mirror of foreignness, masculinity and queerness.

Now he dances again in Scottish Ballet’s Mary Queen of Scots, touring nationwide this autumn. In their bold and visionary reimagining, Rizzio is no shadowy intriguer but an energetic, playful, almost circus-like presence.

With a cross tattoo etched on his body and black velvet draped across his frame, he moves with fluid speed and warmth. His gestures surprise, unfolding, in the words of choreographer Sophie Laplane, “as if thought itself were shaping his motion. We wanted to make him the loyal friend everyone dreams of”.

Laplane and stage director James Bonas add Rizzio is portrayed as “a companion who makes Mary laugh, lifts her after the loss of her first husband, and stands like a shield between her and those who would harm her”.

They even suggest a bond that predates Edinburgh, echoing the Italian historian Pietro Bizzarri – and supported by recent findings – that Rizzio had likely first met Mary in France. Laplane and Bonas also bring a fresh angle to the triangle between Mary, Darnley and Rizzio. In one scene, Mary shows her distress as she watches Darnley and Rizzio’s intimacy – a moment that underlines both the fragility of their relationships and the way jealousy could be turned into a political weapon.

An eternal ghost

The brutality of the end is not softened. A private supper is stormed by armed men, followed by the grotesque repetition of 56 stab wounds and the public theatre of shaming as Rizzio is smeared with feathers and tar. Finally, he is lifted high and placed at the centre of the stage – not erased, but elevated, his spirit light, his presence defiant.

It is a striking reminder of how scapegoats work. The lords of 1566 thought they were eliminating a nuisance; instead, they created a ghost who would never leave.

Four-and-a-half centuries on, David Rizzio still stands for the outsider made to carry a nation’s fears – and for the truth that a scapegoat never quite stays buried.

Dr Emanuela Patti is a lecturer in Italian at the University of Edinburgh